PvP Diplomacy?!?!?

[Kaun]

When it comes to social skills in RPG's (diplomacy as an example); Do you let you players use these skills on other players?

Why/why not? and if you do, how do you do it?

Personally, i generally don't. I just don't see the point. I mean i could let the player roll and if their skills are stacked they will probably succeed but as a GM, telling player A that his character likes player B's character more now because of a dice roll seems futile. Even if i can get player A to play along it is probably going to cause animosity because seldom do players enjoy watching their characters being forced to do something against their will.

Anyway, i am interested to hear others thoughts.

[Kane0]

I'd usually let them if they are being mature and are doing it for a good reason, otherwise it becomes a case of "RP it out between yourselves"

It can work of the party face is being played by someone shy and not good with words, but can also backfire if the boisterous powerplayer is optimising himself a Diplomancer build.

I guess It's up to the players. I mean I'd be happy to accept that my character has been placated by a good diplomacy roll by an NPC, why not a PC?

Edit: We bluff each other a lot, and that always works well.
The biggest problem I have is intimidation. It has wonky mechanics that dont have a save or opposed check or anything, and since you are usually intimidating PCs about your level it doesn't work mechanically. I usually let the targetted PC have an opportunity to make an opposed Intimidate check if they want, or otherwise make a will save against the intimidate attempt.

[kieza]

I allow players to use Bluff on each other in-game, but not Diplomacy or Intimidate. My rationale is that Bluff simply limits the information available to the characters, whereas Diplomacy and Intimidate actually alter the target's attitude, which is something removes control of their character.

[Totally Guy]

I happen to like games that allow for social conflict because you can set up the scene, agree to whatever assumptions and conditions the game makes, say just the right amount of dialogue and get an outcome. By relying on dice you get a level playing field where everyone understands a situation the same way.

When you're trying to do the same without a system to support you one player has to give up else there is no resolution. Playing your hardest and best becomes a bad thing if there's two of you doing it against the other. Caring about the outcome becomes a bad thing if you're a person who plays at their best and hardest.

If you're rolling dice you can still play your hardest and best without upsetting the flow of the game and you can chalk it up to your own tactics and the character's skills and accept the loss.

Some games have the PCs and NPCs play by the same rules and others have PCs and NPCs play by different ones. Then there's a big set of games in which the PCs and NPCs play with the same rules, except for the social stuff and that seems kind of odd to me. I'd expect more games to exist on either end of spectrum.

[obryn]

Only when it's more fun for everyone at the table - including the player getting bluffed or persuaded. Otherwise, nope. Fun trumps PvP skill use.

-O

[scurv]

gross. I hate social rolls between pc's.

[TuggyNE]

I allow players to use Bluff on each other in-game, but not Diplomacy or Intimidate. My rationale is that Bluff simply limits the information available to the characters, whereas Diplomacy and Intimidate actually alter the target's attitude, which is something removes control of their character.

Basically, this.

[SuperPanda]

Very similar to the above statements.

I'll let players use Bluff / Sense Motive to see if they think a character is withholding information, particularly when they already know that the player is withholding information but I don't generally encourage players to use their social rolls against each other.

Diplomacy I might allow for a player who has a hard time wording things but only as a role-playing nudge that "he made the argument really well." It still never works for "give me that magical item you just looted so that I can sell it and by myself an upgrade." It just means that the appropriate reaction is to laugh off the attempt instead of hit the character for it.

Intimidate I don't allow simply because between players I figure they might as well just attack each-other at that point (and if one knows they can't win then there is your intimidation).

[kardar233]

Yeah, I let people roll to lie/detect lies (as it's mostly unconscious reflexes that the person has no control over), but otherwise RP it.

[Jack of Spades]

I see a lot of bluff/sense motive, and the occasional knowledge check, between players, but other than that, it's pretty much all roleplay. Using diplomacy/leadership skills on other players is generally considered a d*** move with us anyhow.

In high fantasy games, we also abuse our relative knowledge of languages against one another too. It works because our group is good at avoiding metagaming. We don't run very functional high-fantasy games.

[Vorr]

Never. But I generally don't let players use the social skills at all. I do it Old School: your character has the social skills of the player. So even if your character is Prince Charming, if your Larry the Deviant anti social third shift gas station attendant cave man, then your prince character won't be so charming.

[huttj509]

It's the sort of thing that can work if everyone at the table has the same expectations, especially if they're good at seperating character knowledge/motivation from player.

I'd not recommend letting it shift attitudes wildly, but to decide "ok, who wins the argument of whether you should talk your way past the guards, sneak past, or kill past" it can provide a handy resolution mechanic as long as nobody built a diplomancer (some weight to the more diplomatic/whatever character can be fine, but not auto-win).

As an example from Shadowrun of the sort of situation it could work, my character was rescued from a Megacorp facility where he had a bunch of wires hooked up to him. As we were escaping, my character said he knew a safe place. The guy driving cast a truth spell and asked "are you lying." Well, out of character the gig was up, because I had to ask to see the wording of the spell, etc. In character, I managed to sucessfully bluff him (don't remember the skills used, it was years ago) and directed us to the Megacorp trap, me having been brainwashed to think I was working for them as an inside man to nab the runner group.

"Why'd you let me drive, man?"
"My character thought you were telling the truth, dude!"

Fun session, good and tense use separating in/out of character knowledge, and great dramatic irony as we ALL knew what was coming.

Look, if your running partners get captured by a Megacorp and are hooked up to wires when you rescue em, just geek them and run unless you have a REALLY good reason otherwise.

But that sort of thing in 3.5 could have involved a bluff roll, possibly diplomacy or intimidate...the situation was such that having PCs in a social contest against each other would not have been out of place. You don't want one player dominating the others willy nilly though.

[huttj509]

Never. But I generally don't let players use the social skills at all. I do it Old School: your character has the social skills of the player. So even if your character is Prince Charming, if your Larry the Deviant anti social third shift gas station attendant cave man, then your prince character won't be so charming.

Do you require the players to have the requisite weapon, heraldry, and wilderness survival skills as well?

[Ravens_cry]

When it comes to social skills in RPG's (diplomacy as an example); Do you let you players use these skills on other players?

Why/why not? and if you do, how do you do it?

Personally, i generally don't. I just don't see the point. I mean i could let the player roll and if their skills are stacked they will probably succeed but as a GM, telling player A that his character likes player B's character more now because of a dice roll seems futile. Even if i can get player A to play along it is probably going to cause animosity because seldom do players enjoy watching their characters being forced to do something against their will.

Anyway, i am interested to hear others thoughts.

The rules don't allow it anyway, at least in D&D 3.X.

[Vorr]

Do you require the players to have the requisite weapon, heraldry, and wilderness survival skills as well?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

But I do hate Roll Playing:

Player 1:"I walk over to the King." **Rolls Diplomacy**
DM:"The King does exactly as you say and gives you anything you want."

OR

Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

[TuggyNE]

I'm not sure I understand the question.

That is, do you require a player to be able to accurately demonstrate precisely how to counter the orc's axeblow and twist their sword past their attempted parry to kill them? If not, there's a serious double standard in play; character ability to hit things, cast spells, whatever is no less abstracted away from player skill in those areas than diplomacy, bluff, or intimidation.

But I do hate Roll Playing:

Player 1:"I walk over to the King." **Rolls Diplomacy**
DM:"The King does exactly as you say and gives you anything you want."

OR

Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

Those are indeed bad, but that's a false dichotomy; those are simply examples of laziness. A comparable situation would be a wizard's player saying "I cast whatever spells are needed to win the fight." Roleplaying relies on the player being able to direct their character's actions, though not necessarily to carry them through successfully themselves; that is, player directs and character acts. Forcing the player to do everything, with no ability to say "yes, my character is able to accomplish this, though I cannot" is a bad idea; equally bad is a player pressing the easy button and saying "good things happen, you figure out how my character got there, OK?"

A concrete example of roughly the right balance is a player saying, "I indicate to the King the negative consequences of failing to honor the alliance with the Dwarves, and politely suggest that the nobility might seize this opportunity to gain power at his expense." This outlines the rough course of Diplomacy without requiring the player to have a silver tongue or the mind of a Richelieu; it's abstract without being pointlessly vague. Furthermore, the DM can actually work with that to explain the result; it's possible to have the right idea, but stumble on your words (or, for that matter, to be inefficient in your approach, but so eloquent you manage to achieve the desired result anyway).

[Ravens_cry]

Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

It generally doesn't work like that. Sure, it may take that long out of game, but much more time is generally spent in game. The rules for Gather Information in 3.5 explicitly mention this.
If you are doing it differently, you are breaking the very rules you are complaining about.

[Kaun]

A concrete example of roughly the right balance is a player saying, "I indicate to the King the negative consequences of failing to honor the alliance with the Dwarves, and politely suggest that the nobility might seize this opportunity to gain power at his expense." This outlines the rough course of Diplomacy without requiring the player to have a silver tongue or the mind of a Richelieu; it's abstract without being pointlessly vague. Furthermore, the DM can actually work with that to explain the result; it's possible to have the right idea, but stumble on your words (or, for that matter, to be inefficient in your approach, but so eloquent you manage to achieve the desired result anyway).

You require them to provide leverage. I like to do the same thing. It doesn't make sense for a lot of these skills to work with out it. A diplomacy check with out leverage is fine to improve someones opinion of you, but to convince someone to do something they normally wouldn't do requires some sort of leverage.

[Sidmen]

You require them to provide leverage. I like to do the same thing. It doesn't make sense for a lot of these skills to work with out it. A diplomacy check with out leverage is fine to improve someones opinion of you, but to convince some one to do something they normally wouldn't do requires some sort of leverage.

Most of the time, yes. However, this leverage can be either real (I have a painting of you with your mistress), or imagined (rumors that the nobility are losing faith in the king, that if he fails to live up to his obligations to the Dwarves, they might fail to live up to their obligations to the king when he needs it... a rumor started by you a few days ago with no actual basis in fact).

[Totally Guy]

Player 1:"I walk over to the King." **Rolls Diplomacy**
DM:"The King does exactly as you say and gives you anything you want."

OR

Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

Standard response: "No, you tell me what you are trying to achieve, and what your characters says or does and if those things align, I'll tell you what you need to roll."

[NichG]

The whole 'you don't ask your players to demonstrate swordsmanship, so why should you ask them to demonstrate persuasion' thing is misleading in my opinion, and it keeps coming up in these discussions.

Fundamentally, a game in some way tests the abilities of its players. In soccer you have to run and kick the ball and have spatial awareness of your teammates and be able to aim. In chess, you have to figure out what move to make. I think its a perfectly consistent position to hold that tabletop RPGs are a game about social interactions and roleplay. Its in the name. This doesn't mean you can't have social mechanics or die rolling as part of it, but it does mean that you're not somehow being illogical if you choose to run your game differently.

And there are games where you would have to demonstrate your swordsmanship. People do medieval combat recreations all the time.

[TuggyNE]

Fundamentally, a game in some way tests the abilities of its players. In soccer you have to run and kick the ball and have spatial awareness of your teammates and be able to aim. In chess, you have to figure out what move to make. I think its a perfectly consistent position to hold that tabletop RPGs are a game about social interactions and roleplay. Its in the name. This doesn't mean you can't have social mechanics or die rolling as part of it, but it does mean that you're not somehow being illogical if you choose to run your game differently.

I'm not sure I agree with this; D&D in particular is a combat-heavy RPG, so it's often reasonable to expect similar, consistent treatment between pure roleplay skills and pure fighting skills. There's also the question of what abilities you're testing; it's a very old-school idea to test e.g. player ability to ferret out bizarre traps based on the DM's habits, or to require the player to convince the DM of something in order for the character to succeed, or whatever. More on this in a bit.

And there are games where you would have to demonstrate your swordsmanship. People do medieval combat recreations all the time.

Indeed, but those aren't what you might call "tabletop roleplaying games", so they don't fit the discussion too well.

So I'd say it's a matter of two major considerations: genre conventions/player-DM agreement on the one hand, and consistency on the other. That is: if the biggest focus of the game is complicated social maneuvers, with a strong emphasis on player ability rather than character traits, then it's fine to agree to be constrained by your own actual diplomatic abilities, as a group. Similarly, if you really like the battle of wits between a fair but killer DM and metagaming players, it's fine to basically ignore a rogue's skills in favor of requiring lots of care with 10' poles.

In both cases, however, it's a group agreement to ignore certain levels of character abstraction. Those abstractions were put in to allow precisely the sort of separation between character and player ability I mentioned in my last post: not to remove the need for player skill, but to change it from "I personally know the minutiae of trap-checking/diplomatic maneuvering/weaving baskets/casting spells" to "I've figured out approximately what my character should do, and I'm going to have them do that as well as they can".

For consistency's sake, if you allow this sort of higher-level direction for some things (the classic example being sword-swinging, but that's by no means the only one), you should seriously consider using the same criteria for other things (such as trap-finding, social skills, and so forth).

[Totally Guy]

Fundamentally, a game in some way tests the abilities of its players.

I'm cool with that. But how do competitive folks get an outcome? Does a third party listen and decide it? The skill I've found to be tested in practice in an unrestricted environment is manipulation of the players through force of personality. It was really awkward back then.

What rules could we impose to help the group judge the player's portrayal of the characters and not judge the player's own dominance over the group? You might have these already but they might not be written down.

[huttj509]

For consistency's sake, if you allow this sort of higher-level direction for some things (the classic example being sword-swinging, but that's by no means the only one), you should seriously consider using the same criteria for other things (such as trap-finding, social skills, and so forth).

Yeah, there was a reason I mentioned Heraldry Lore and Wilderness Survival skills as well, but 'weapon skill' was the one focused on.

I mean, let's take Survival. If someone finding their way overland mentions finding a landmark in the right direction, and using that to keep the path until they next check the map and compass, do you give them a bonus? Do you require that sort of thing for them to find their way around at all? How much of a bonus? +2? Enough to negate that the character has wisdom of 6 and no skill points?

What if the player mentions what sort of berries they're looking for, how to tell good ones from poisonous, when foraging for food. How about edible fungi?

Heck, knowledge checks to identify monsters, spellcraft checks to identify spells.

My character can know arcane signs I can barely imagine. He can be able to survive in the woods with naught but 2 sticks to rub together. He can jump farther, swim faster, and climb better than I ever could. He can disguise himself so well his own mother wouldn't have a clue, but Pelor forbid he be able to string 4 sentences together without needing to say "um, you know" in the middle, because that would just be silly.

[Totally Guy]

I made this quick flow chart to remind myself how to run this sort of stuff.

[Friv]

The level of social interaction that I allow die rolling for between players is equal to the level of physical interaction that I allow die rolling for.

If players can make rolls to grab objects from each other or wrestle one another to the ground or what have you, I allow minor social rolls with equivalent long-term effects (i.e. not many). If players can stab one another to death without the table declaring foul, they can persuade each other just as fully.

Obviously, this works better in games with functioning social mechanics than it does in D&D, where I usually just have to declare "Yeah, what he's saying makes sense" and see what players do with that.

[LibraryOgre]

I'll talk about the abstraction bit in another thread, but...

It really depends on the kind of game.

In D&D, we roll Bluff and Sense Motive against each other all the time. They are the primary weapons of our PvP arsenal... lying to people, telling half-truths, and watching their player flail in frustration when they can't act on things they know to be true, but their character does not.

In a more social-oriented game (L5R, for example), where the concept of a "party" is necessarily looser, PvP diplomacy is the order of the day, and it is not about forcing another character to do something... Diplomacy isn't a magical headlock that you can use to walk someone around the ring. No, Diplomacy is about influencing the NPCs reactions, so someone who reacts against it is insane.

If I successfully use Diplomacy against a fellow PC, but don't convince the player, then the player has a choice... let his PC be swayed, because I was so bloody convincing, or have the PC be thought mad, stupid, or obstinant by the NPCs around because he clearly failed to listen to such a persuasive argument. If he doesn't want his PC to be swayed by the argument, that's fine, but in a social game, it is NOT just about choosing your ground and standing on it. It's about making the current flow the way you want it to. There are LOTS of examples of people in RL who refuse to be swayed by any kind of argument, from politicians to 3-year-olds. But that doesn't make them right, and if society carries on in spite of them, they're just a pebble in a stream, able to do little to affect the course of the river.

[NichG]

I'm cool with that. But how do competitive folks get an outcome? Does a third party listen and decide it? The skill I've found to be tested in practice in an unrestricted environment is manipulation of the players through force of personality. It was really awkward back then.

What rules could we impose to help the group judge the player's portrayal of the characters and not judge the player's own dominance over the group? You might have these already but they might not be written down.

The game in some sense naturally resolves the winner, since each character can choose how to move on from a given event. Much like in combat you take hitpoint damage which takes some time to heal, or you expend spell slots which take some time to recover, there will generally be behavioral consequences that persist beyond the decision point. So I'm not sure there's a clean, objective 'winner' to a social conflict so much as there is a continual pattern of gains and trade-offs over the course of several sessions. If the rest of the party thinks you're an idiot, or dangerous, or whatever, then that long-term impression takes a lot of work to get over, even if you did manage to resolve a single event to your satisfaction.

I'm not sure that's exactly what you're looking for though. I've had clever players really skillfully manipulate other players and its made for some very interesting games. There was one campaign where a player maintained two simultaneous 'models' for what the real plot was in his head, one plausible but the other what he thought was 'really' going on and he used the false model to manipulate the party while he built his goals around the other one. That kind of richness is hard to achieve with a strictly mechanical system. Having mechanics that interface alongside it is fine, and can even improve the richness of the result - things like, you can use this power and the target must tell you one thing they honestly want from you.

As far as D&D being combat heavy, the rules are, I agree (though individual games need not have combat for many sessions and it'll work just fine - freeform RP is always an available fallback here). In some sense thats why using D&D's rules for social interaction is a bad idea - the engine clearly doesn't focus on it, so the result is going to be somewhat primitive compared to natural human social interaction.

Anyhow, at this point I'm mostly arguing preference. The point I wanted to make is that there's not necessarily a double-standard. Call it my version of Stormwind: Just because you ask players to demonstrate one ability out of character does not mean you need to ask them to demonstrate all abilities out of character to be logically consistent.

[scurv]

if it is a Roll Play campaign, I am agreeable with using social rolls

If it is a role-play campaign. Your RP better sell it, Because I am not buying that roll.

The point of Role-playing is to role-play. If we are going to skip out on the RP. I am just going to fire up a gamesystem.

[Friv]

if it is a Roll Play campaign, I am agreeable with using social rolls

If it is a role-play campaign. Your RP better sell it, Because I am not buying that roll.

The point of Role-playing is to role-play. If we are going to skip out on the RP. I am just going to fire up a gamesystem.

I assume that you therefore remove all social traits from games that you run?