"Real role-players don't roll dice!" and other such madness

[Libertad]

Some guys think that the ideal form of "role-playing" involves the combination of drama club and a gaming session, where the players and DM have their characters converse with each other describe what they do without rolling any dice, engaging in combat, or planning out tactics.

Normally, I'm like "hey, whatever floats your boat." But sometimes these same guys associate the more "tactically-minded" gamers as not being interested in role-playing or somehow less capable of creating/telling a compelling story.

I think Rich Burlew of GitP said it best: when you describe how you character decapitates the hydra with his vorpal sword, that's role-playing. When your bard convinces the king with diplomacy to negotiate for peace, that too is role-playing.

A large emphasis of D&D is on combat, but you can totally min-max non-combative, "talky" types. Diplomacy is a game breaker skill if you bump the bonus up high enough, and you can simply say "I roll Diplomacy to convince the orcs not to fight me" and get a high result. If the DM accepts the results without asking for description, it's no more descriptive or immersive than him saying "you get hit with the axe and take 5 damage."

And let's not get into the mind-set among a few that verbal socialization should be not done with die rolls by actual arguments alone. What if a socially reclusive gamer wanted to play a silver-tongued bard, or an inspiring paladin?

Thoughts, opinions, stories?

[Swordslinger]

I think Rich Burlew of GitP said it best: when you describe how you character decapitates the hydra with his vorpal sword, that's role-playing. When your bard convinces the king with diplomacy to negotiate for peace, that too is role-playing.

A large emphasis of D&D is on combat, but you can totally min-max non-combative, "talky" types. Diplomacy is a game breaker skill if you bump the bonus up high enough, and you can simply say "I roll Diplomacy to convince the orcs not to fight me" and get a high result. If the DM accepts the results without asking for description, it's no more descriptive or immersive than him saying "you get hit with the axe and take 5 damage."

Diplomacy is a special case though, because it is highly dissociative at higher levels. It's important to know what exactly was said and why the king decided to agree to an unreasonable request. Without that, it isn't roleplaying because you cannot understand the mindset of the NPC, therefore you can't actually take on that role.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Libertad, do you want me to bump the 'Anatomy of Failed Design: Diplomacy' thread?

[Libertad]

Libertad, do you want me to bump the 'Anatomy of Failed Design: Diplomacy' thread?

Bump away!

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51971

This actually reminds me of how many players min-maxed in Vampire games by being super-smooth mind control vampires who can get anyone to do anything for them.

The idea in Vampire was that less emphasis on combat would discourage min-maxing and enhance role-playing, but it did not. Players are a clever bunch, and they'll find ways to drive "Storyteller" type DMs mad with overpowered cheese.

[NineInchNall]

Diplomacy is a special case though, because it is highly dissociative at higher levels. It's important to know what exactly was said and why the king decided to agree to an unreasonable request. Without that, it isn't roleplaying because you cannot understand the mindset of the NPC, therefore you can't actually take on that role.

You know why the king decided to an unreasonable request: the Bard made it sound reasonable somehow. The somehow really is unimportant. Just 'cause you don't have a detailed answer to "what's my motivation" doesn't mean you aren't roleplaying.

Fighter: Did you hear? Bard convinced the king to let us use his palace to store all our dragon carcasses!
Cleric: By Pelor's light! How did he manage such a feat, Fighter?
Fighter: I don't rightly know, Cleric. Bard met with the king while I was getting my armor polished.
Cleric: Alas, he will probably pull a Zellos if we ask and say, "That - is a secret."

[ishy]

I think Rich Burlew of GitP said it best: when you describe how you character decapitates the hydra with his vorpal sword, that's role-playing. When your bard convinces the king with diplomacy to negotiate for peace, that too is role-playing.

There is also this strip from Rich Burlew about basically this issue:
http://www.wizards.com/global/images/rp ... ain_en.gif

<snip>
This actually reminds me of how many players min-maxed in Vampire games by being super-smooth mind control vampires who can get anyone to do anything for them.

The idea in Vampire was that less emphasis on combat would discourage min-maxing and enhance role-playing, but it did not. Players are a clever bunch, and they'll find ways to drive "Storyteller" type DMs mad with overpowered cheese.

The problem here isn't anything like min-maxxing vs roleplaying but just that the dm and the players expected something else out of the game. If you wanted a certain kind of game than you should tell them up front what to expect. And you can tell them what you expect from them too.

[Libertad]

The problem here isn't anything like min-maxxing vs roleplaying but just that the dm and the players expected something else out of the game. If you wanted a certain kind of game than you should tell them up front what to expect. And you can tell them what you expect from them too.

On a related note, some players associate min-maxers, "roll-players," and powergamers with combat monkeys and assume that people who make characters with "social" abilities are closer to the ideal "role-player."

Except that this is a poor view of min-maxing, and Vampire attracted another kind of "powergamer": the guys who make vampires with oodles of social dice pools to convince strangers to voluntarily give over their wallets and make them believe that the moon's made of green cheese.

[hyzmarca]

And let's not get into the mind-set among a few that verbal socialization should be not done with die rolls by actual arguments alone. What if a socially reclusive gamer wanted to play a silver-tongued bard, or an inspiring paladin?

For most socially-reclusive gamers, the entire point if playing a silver-tongued bard or an inspiring paladin is to be able to make inspiring speeches in a safe and friendly environment. Using a die roll to simulate that kind of defeats the point.

Rolling a d20 just doesn't have the same emotional payoff as swinging a real axe at someone's head does. It isn't as exciting, as engaging, or as visceral. It doesn't have the same emotional payoff at all. We tolerate the die roll for two simple reasons. 1) it's cheaper and 2) we don't want to actually kill the DM; the game would be very short if we did.

Diplomacy is different in that regard. Making a good speech doesn't cost anything, it isn't particularly dangerous, and you've usually got a lot of free time to think of something clever to say between turns. You're also talking to imaginary people in front a small group of your friends who you are comfortable with. Thus the anxieties that prevent many people from taking up public speaking do not usually come into play.

[ishy]

It isn't just anxieties though, some people can't make those speeches because they have no clue what to say or how to say it. Not everyone can sound inspiring no matter how long they have to think about it. So you can either let them get away with a die roll or telling them they can never play that type of char.
And the second options seems unfair for them since you're not requiring people in real life to break down doors either.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Suggestion, for if you want to reward people coming up with cool and detailed explanations for what happens:

If anyone in the party comes up with a cool explanation for why what happened happened, the party gets some asymmetric bonus.

This way, people aren't being rewarded or punished for personally not being silver-tongued or whatever, but there is still an incentive to try.

[Swordslinger]

You know why the king decided to an unreasonable request: the Bard made it sound reasonable somehow. The somehow really is unimportant. Just 'cause you don't have a detailed answer to "what's my motivation" doesn't mean you aren't roleplaying.

No, that motivation is absolutely important to roleplaying. Suppose an NPC bard convinced the king to institute a genocide against elves policy using social skills. The PCs go up to him and ask the king why he's doing it.

Does the king go and break the fourth wall and say that some bard dude used social skills on him. Does the king not know at all why he's doing what he's doing? Does he act like a mind controlled slave or is he still capable of rational thought? If the latter, what kind of evidence could get the king to change his mind?

All those things are damn important to any game where a DM is expected to take on the persona of the king and PCs are able to interact with that character.

As a DM I'm not even sure how to roleplay out somebody whose been hit by social skills if there's no rationale behind how they work. You can't take on the role of that character until you have some idea of what he's thinking and what his motivations are.

[Gx1080]

You know, I'm starting to think that diplomacy skills should either have hard coded when they can't be used or just roll with the mind rape.

I would prefer the latter, because I really don't believe that PCs should have mind control powers outside of combat because that's just fetish fodder.

[darkmaster]

Does the king go and break the fourth wall and say that some bard dude used social skills on him. Does the king not know at all why he's doing what he's doing? Does he act like a mind controlled slave or is he still capable of rational thought? If the latter, what kind of evidence could get the king to change his mind?... As a DM I'm not even sure how to roleplay out somebody whose been hit by social skills if there's no rationale behind how they work. You can't take on the role of that character until you have some idea of what he's thinking and what his motivations are.

The rationale depends on the social skill, if they used diplomacy then they convinced the king it was in the best interest of the kingdom to kill all the elves so the party has to convince him the elves are helpful. If they used bluff then they convinced the king the elves were planning a fictional Coup d'état and the party has to prove the elves mean no harm. If they used intimidation then the king is just so scared shitless of them that he'll do whatever they say to avoid being curb-stomped and the party has to somehow ensure his safety. If they used raw charisma then they king just thinks they're so awesome that everything they say must be awesome and genocide is cool because they're cool and the party has to convince him of how insane that is. It's not hard, you just have to remember that the fluff of social skills is actually pretty limited, even if the effects are really over the top.

As an aside, I like to give out bonuses to rolls for well reasoned arguments.

[Swordslinger]

As an aside, I like to give out bonuses to rolls for well reasoned arguments.

The problem is that you really don't even need well reasoned arguments based on how social skills work. I mean you're having a king (possibly a good aligned king) pretty much go along with genocide with no evidence at all because some guy succeeded on a bluff roll.

Then does the first guy to come along and challenge that automatically win because the first guy's case was totally weak and had no evidence to back it up at all? If so, why are the NPCs that inhabit the world such morons? Talk about verisimilitude breaking and immersion breaking. A king should feel like a wise ruler, not some moronic child that jumps to ridiculous lengths based on no evidence.

Intimidate is about the only social skill that actually works in some degree. At least you know the NPC is doing something out of fear. Even still without any real evidence or reputation to back up the guy's badassness I don't see a proud warrior king just backing down easily.

Current social systems that I've seen just are not good enough to handle social encounters without completely destroying immersion and story.

[Stahlseele]

As an aside, I like to give out bonuses to rolls for well reasoned arguments.

Problem i see with this:
If you play, you want to pretend to know stuff.
Not to have to know stuff so you can play better.

[TheFlatline]

As an aside, I like to give out bonuses to rolls for well reasoned arguments.

Problem i see with this:
If you play, you want to pretend to know stuff.
Not to have to know stuff so you can play better.

Where do you draw the line though? Seriously?

"My Intelligence is 34, our opponent doesn't have an intelligence that high. *rolls a d20* hey look, I rolled a 32 to figure out the villain's plan. Tell me what he's going to do next DM."

At that point, why fucking bother playing?

I do need help somewhere along the line as the DM. You don't have to be a great orator to come up with an idea of why the King gives you the favor. That's what the die roll is for. I at least need to know what you go through and do to try to outsmart the villain. Otherwise it's just ProgressQuest with dice.

Here's the thing. The opposite end of the roleplaying spectrum from "totally in character" is not, to me, tactical gaming. It's spoonfeeding. If I have to spoonfeed a PC, they're not roleplaying, they're not even engaged in the game. They're getting fed like a baby. I've *never* seen anyone get into their character when they get spoonfed by the DM. An engaged roleplayer is pulling information out of the DM as fast as the DM can manage it, while a spoonfeeder is only getting the info the DM forces down their throat.

A real life example of when a player wanted to be spoonfed but turning it into some roleplaying:
"I contact my order and see if they have info that can help us."
"Your mentor gets in touch with you. What do you want to know?"
"Err... anything that can help us?"
"That's pretty vague. He needs a direction to work in."
"Well I've got a high intelligence, what should I be asking for?"
"I have no clue what's important to you or your character. I need to know so I can tell you how long it takes, whether your mentor *can* get that information, what the favor is going to cost you, and what information you're actually going to get."
*Player blinks several times*
"I want to know if we've done assassinations for either of these noble houses and if any of them were unusual contracts. And anything else that's noteworthy during that lookup"
"Excellent. Your mentor says it will take a couple of days for that information, and that if you could teach some of the finer points of knifework to one of his new students for a day or two that'd be ample trade. You always were quicker with a knife than he was."

Which led to a scene with his mentor, a student, and a chance to do some roleplaying.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, that is okay in my book.
But getting bonus dice for etiquette checks because you happen to study socio economics and feudal aera politcs in intercontinental scale is bad.

[NineInchNall]

Does the king go and break the fourth wall and say that some bard dude used social skills on him. Does the king not know at all why he's doing what he's doing? Does he act like a mind controlled slave or is he still capable of rational thought? If the latter, what kind of evidence could get the king to change his mind?

Holy shit. Don't say things this stupid. You come up with something - or you fucking don't.

Scenario 1: the party asks the king, who responds: "The Japanese ambassador has assured me that my penis is exceptionally large, even mastodonian in size, and that it absolutely dwarfs his, which he described as miniscule. I applaud the Japanese ambassador for his candor and honesty. He has thoroughly convinced me that our country should go to war with Canada."

Scenario 2: "My reasons are not to be questioned. I am king!"

I mean fuck, man. Why on earth do you care what contortions of rhetoric the bard used? The important thing is that the king now has a specific belief. So you want to know how to play him? You play him as though he has that fucking belief. Then, if they want to change his mind, they roll Diplomacy - with huge modifiers if they have evidence, maybe. Or maybe not, if the king is a creationist. (Ba dum pish)

Do you demand knowledge of how every NPC and monster the PCs interact with came to hold a given belief? If you don't, then how can you possibly play the role of any of them? By your reasoning, since you don't know why a particular character thinks Pelor is the bees' knees, it's not possible to play out the scene where the PCs go to the temple to get some healing pots from the guy, because you won't know how to react if they ask him.

You know what you do? You either make some shit up or change the subject. Just like you do with every other NPC that beliefs any given thing.

[Swordslinger]

I mean fuck, man. Why on earth do you care what contortions of rhetoric the bard used? The important thing is that the king now has a specific belief. So you want to know how to play him? You play him as though he has that fucking belief. Then, if they want to change his mind, they roll Diplomacy - with huge modifiers if they have evidence, maybe. Or maybe not, if the king is a creationist. (Ba dum pish)

So apparently in your fantasy worlds, things like evidence and logic don't even matter and the only way to ever convince an NPC of anything is to roll a diplomacy check?

Good to know that if you're not a bard or rogue you might as well just leave the room during the roleplaying bits.

[NineInchNall]

Oh. My. God.

Thank you for the false dichotomy. Rolls are necessary when there's a nonzero chance of failure and a nonzero chance of success and when the action is significant. Sometimes the implicit modifiers are so huge that you can't fail; like telling a farmer, "Hey, a dragon is burning down your bard," and subsequently pointing at the dragon that is currently breathing fire on said barn. Sometimes the conversation doesn't really matter that much, so you just let the rogue named Jimmy convince the wench serving beers that his name is Timmy.

What do you do when a PC talks to an NPC who thinks that the king was murdered by the vizier? What do you do when a PC talks to an NPC who thinks that Pelor's nuts taste like chocolate? What do you do when a PC talks to an NPC who thinks that it's a good idea to burn his crops rather than store them?

You may never have considered why this NPC thinks what he thinks, because he's just a nameless shopkeeper, chimneysweep, or barmaid. What you do is come up with a reason for it then, when it matters. And you know what? Sometimes people's reasons for believing what they do are shit. Sometimes they believe what they believe in spite of contradicting evidence. Sometimes they believe what they believe only because that's what they've been told by someone who had grasp of persuasive rhetoric. That's why you hear people say things like, "Well, it made sense when he said it." So the reason you give can be as rational or as full of utter nonsense gibberish as you bloody well please.

What the fuck?

[TheFlatline]

Oh. My. God.

Thank you for the false dichotomy. Rolls are necessary when there's a nonzero chance of failure and a nonzero chance of success and when the action is significant

Actually I'd disagree with that (although on subsequent readings I'm not sure if we are disagreeing. I'm not sure where your stance is in that last post). Dice and their subsequent rules are there as a layer of abstraction and second as a leveling field.

We reach for the dice when we, as players, can't do what our PCs should be able to do (or at least have a good chance of success at doing).

We also reach for the dice when two players (PC vs PC or DM vs PC) are of vastly unequal real life skill levels in something and the player characters don't reflect that. If one person is a toastmaster and has been giving public speeches and motivational talks for 20 years and the other is some dude who barely sees the sunlight and shies away from normal social interaction, then you need to reach for the dice.

At what point you reach for the dice is a grey area, to be determined by both the group as a general trend and a specific instance by the DM.

If a player says "I don't know, let's offer to marry the King's daughter off to the country he wants to ally with in exchange for what we want" that's engaging enough for me. At that point Mr Socially Awkward can reach for the D20 and let the rules do the lifting. Probably even with a bonus to be frank. But saying "I want the King to do what we want." and then reaching for the D20 isn't engaging, it's spoonfeeding. It's putting more of a story burden on the DM and reduces the Players to random number generators, which I could then replace with my iPhone. And it sets up a situation where the players can fuck with the DM "So just what were the terms we hammered out huh?" or a situation where the DM can fuck with the players. "You made your roll. Great! The King agrees that once Mexico annexes into his Kingdom, you'll get what you want. Oh, and one of you needs to stay here as a hostage to kill if you don't deliver in a week."

The *only* time I say "let's just do this with a roll" and move on is when whatever is going on is a temporary stumbling block and literally has no bearing on the story afterwards. Negotiating with the King is *not* that level of triviality. Imagine you're watching a movie (or reading a book) and the adroit bard strides confidently up to the cold and distant King ready to negotiate the big treaty to achieve whatever needs to be done so the heroes have a chance of actually succeeding, and the movie jump-cuts to the next scene, where it's casually mentioned that the heroes got what they wanted and are moving on.

That's just bad storytelling. It's Uwe Boll levels of bad storytelling. You don't have to have an oscar winning performance, but to just gloss it over and say "eh fuck it whatever" is limp shit.

[darkmaster]

The problem is that you really don't even need well reasoned arguments based on how social skills work. I mean you're having a king (possibly a good aligned king) pretty much go along with genocide with no evidence at all because some guy succeeded on a bluff roll.

Then does the first guy to come along and challenge that automatically win because the first guy's case was totally weak and had no evidence to back it up at all? If so, why are the NPCs that inhabit the world such morons? Talk about verisimilitude breaking and immersion breaking. A king should feel like a wise ruler, not some moronic child that jumps to ridiculous lengths based on no evidence.

Intimidate is about the only social skill that actually works in some degree. At least you know the NPC is doing something out of fear. Even still without any real evidence or reputation to back up the guy's badassness I don't see a proud warrior king just backing down easily.

Current social systems that I've seen just are not good enough to handle social encounters without completely destroying immersion and story.

Well to be fair the examples were fairly over simplified. Intimidate works on its own, but for the others you'd have to bluff first to get the king to believe the elves are plotting against him, then diplomacy/cha him to convince him to kill all elves. Then the PCs would need to Find a way to dissuade him from killing all elves, possibly presenting evidence that the elves aren't plotting against him to make it easier to convince him.

As to bonuses for well reasoned arguments. That's why you're only giving out a bonus and not requiring them for the game.

[tzor]

"My Intelligence is 34, our opponent doesn't have an intelligence that high. *rolls a d20* hey look, I rolled a 32 to figure out the villain's plan. Tell me what he's going to do next DM."

There are two fundamental flaws to the argument.

Flaw one: Once any dimension of character power reaches the insanity level, role playing starts to fall apart no matter what you do. It's a real bitch to really role play Superman.

Flaw two: That's not an intelligence check. (You need to know information in order to determine what he would do.) It's not a proper intelligence check. (No really, just try figuring out what Dr. Evil would do, he's so frigging stupid no halfway intelligent person would even consider that option.)

You really could have high intelligent people trying to figure out plans. That's Sherlock Holmes, not D&D but I digress.

A player should not have to know about medieval heraldry ... a character should. A player should not have to know about court ettiqute ... a character should.

The purpose of the dice is to be the impartial arbitrator about what the character might know, either through study or just the King Arthur effect.

[NineInchNall]

Actually I'd disagree with that (although on subsequent readings I'm not sure if we are disagreeing. I'm not sure where your stance is in that last post). Dice and their subsequent rules are there as a layer of abstraction and second as a leveling field.

No, we're not really disagreeing.

We reach for the dice when we, as players, can't do what our PCs should be able to do (or at least have a good chance of success at doing).

We also reach for the dice when two players (PC vs PC or DM vs PC) are of vastly unequal real life skill levels in something and the player characters don't reflect that. If one person is a toastmaster and has been giving public speeches and motivational talks for 20 years and the other is some dude who barely sees the sunlight and shies away from normal social interaction, then you need to reach for the dice.

At what point you reach for the dice is a grey area, to be determined by both the group as a general trend and a specific instance by the DM.

Absolutely.

The *only* time I say "let's just do this with a roll" and move on is when whatever is going on is a temporary stumbling block and literally has no bearing on the story afterwards. Negotiating with the King is *not* that level of triviality. Imagine you're watching a movie (or reading a book) and the adroit bard strides confidently up to the cold and distant King ready to negotiate the big treaty to achieve whatever needs to be done so the heroes have a chance of actually succeeding, and the movie jump-cuts to the next scene, where it's casually mentioned that the heroes got what they wanted and are moving on.

That's just bad storytelling. It's Uwe Boll levels of bad storytelling. You don't have to have an oscar winning performance, but to just gloss it over and say "eh fuck it whatever" is limp shit.

I don't know. I could see that kind of thing being played for laughs. Or it could be part of some sort of framed narrative where the actual details of the agreement are slowly revealed as the story progresses. Or it could be played all mysterious, where the very fact that you don't know how the bard does what he does is an actual narrative device.

It just depends on how you spin it, really. But yes, a player's saying, "I don't know, let's offer to marry the King's daughter off to the country he wants to ally with in exchange for what we want," is more engaging than just a flat, "Let's roll!"

Not that I was suggesting otherwise. That's where bonuses come in, 'cause they encourage and incentivize that sort of player behavior.

[Swordslinger]

As to bonuses for well reasoned arguments. That's why you're only giving out a bonus and not requiring them for the game.

But that's just the problem. Once you introduce any level of arbitrary diplomacy where you convince someone without a reason, you toss well reasoned arguments out the window.

You can't pose a well reasoned argument to counter "I just think that way for no logical reason."

Because seriously, I have no fucking clue why the king who was diplomacied went form loving elves to hating them. I have no idea what would convince him otherwise, because keep in mind: no proof is presented, no arguments are actually made. It's just: toss a dice and poof, the king becomes a new person with new beliefs with no storyline as to how that happened. In fact, mechanically there is no need for a reason at all.

Once you start having NPCs behave like that, there is no well reasoned argument to counter that. You're arguing against fucking charm person, only instead of normal charm person, you can't just dispel it or wait for the duration to expire. This shit is permanent and just as irrational.

You can't have illogical mechanics and then ask people to add well reasoned arguments to modify them. It makes no fucking sense. No argument can be well reasoned when people do shit just because of a die roll.